Tuesday, December 09, 2008

It seems hard to believe that Warped Tour has now been running 13 years. The original Lollapalooza Festival was supposed to be the indie-festival benchmark and it faded away in about half this time. This DVD documents the Warped experience from the 2007 Tour and mixes live footage with interviews from a number of bands.

The DVD is fun to watch as it is a good representation of the Warped Tour experience, from both the band and the audience member perspective. The camera crew uses a multi-camera set-up but the shots have a loose feel so the viewer can appreciate the experience without the footage feeling like an over-produced music video.

The bands are a nice eclectic mix of current fan favorites, old guard punks, and new up-and-coming bands. The interviews are fairly intersting and the age difference between the bands shows - Killswitch Engage talks about how they couldn't do the tour in a van and you have bands on the opposite end of the spectrum, like The Almost and Escape The Fate, who seem like they just climbed out of the van. The footage gives you a good perspective on the bands, their live set and what they are all about.

In addition to the main program of live footage and interviews, there are two additional tracks on the disc. The first track allows the watcher to access the long-form interviews, which run about 3 -6 minutes per band. (There are only interview snippets included with the live footage as part of the main program). The second track features additional live footage from the tour.